Posts Written OnMarch 2007

Why Do Some Wineries and Restaurants Even Have Websites?

Warning: What follows is a frustration-induced rant. You’ve been warned. My ‘day job’ is in Internet marketing and I’ve long been a believer in the power of the Internet as an affordable tool organizations of most any size can leverage to increase profits and customer loyalty. But, they should also maintain their websites, or they can have the opposite effect–alienating customers. I guess that I’m saying that I think every company should have a Web presence, but only if they are going to bother to pay attention to it. If that isn’t part of your plan, don’t spend the money…

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LENNDEVOURS Turns 3 Today

In some ways, it feels like only yesterday that I started this blog with a short, not particularly interesting post. And it turns out that LENNDEVOURS has become something that I never intended or could have imagined. For one, it’s become almost exclusively a wine blog, and one focused on the wines of New York State. I never expected that, but it happened organically, on its own and from the beginning I said that I’d kind of let this whole blog thing take me where it wanted. Second, never in a million years did I think that my early wine…

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WBW #31: Trove 2004 Cabernet Sauvignon (California)

Wine Blogging Wednesday is upon us again people and this time around, that means wines in non-traditional packaging. I’ll admit is–as open as I was to the theme, I had my reservations. First of all, I’ve never had a bag-in-box wine that I’ve found even gulpable. Second, I was worried that we’d lose a lot of our wine geek participants. I guess we’ll find out in the next day or two if some of our more "high class" WBWers stuck with us and expanded their horizons a little bit. I hope they do and I hope they found some interesting…

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Wine Blogging Wednesday and Wine & Spirits Magazine

Just a couple brief things this morning… First and foremost, don’t forget that today is Wine Blogging Wednesday #31: Non-Traditional Packaging. Nena and I will be tasting our bag-in-box wine this evening, so stay tuned for my contribution to everyone’s favorite virtual wine tasting. Secondly, I heard a rumor from a co-worker that this here blog was mentioned in the new April 2007 issue of Wine & Spirits Magazine. Of course their website isn’t one that would allow me to find out for sure and I don’t typically see the magazine around my house so I don’t read it often.…

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Grand Cru Classes to host Open House April 23

I’ve written about Grand Cru Classes before and its founders, Tracy and Jared are knowledgeable, passionate wine lovers who are doing something I believe in–bringing top-notch wine education to the North Fork of Long Island. They started with their classes last summer, teaching them at various host wineries as they renovated the old Catapano Dairy Farm to convert it into a wine education center. Well, on April 23 from 4:00 to 8:00 p.m. they are happy to host a grand opening open house. They’ll be serving wine and cheese and offering tours of their new facilities. For those of you…

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WTN: Peconic Bay Winery 2005 Steel Fermented Chardonnay (North Fork of Long Island)

I can still remember my first sip of Peconic Bay Winery’s steel fermented Chardonnay like it was yesterday. I had just moved to Long Island and was then only flirting with the region and its wines. This flirtation has since become an all-out love affair and I count this wine as one that stoked the fire of my neophyte palate. At the time, my vision of Chardonnay was of the flabby butter bombs with big everything – oak, vanilla, fruit – that I had tasted from both Australia and California. Based on my early experiences with those wines, I used…

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WTN: Corey Creek Vineyards 2005 Cabernet Franc

Despite the obvious success of Merlot on the North Fork, there are many people – myself included – who get just as excited about Cabernet Franc. This grape, a more subdued, more feminine genetic parent of Cabernet Sauvignon thrives in our climate. Fill a blind-tasting table with Long Island Cabernet Franc, however, and you’ll taste almost as many styles as there are wineries – from un-oaked, Chinon-style reds best suited to casual foods and young drinking all the way up to rich, strenuously oaked wines that can cellar well and seem almost Sauvignon-like in their flavor profile. Vintage variation and…

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Where is the Long Island Wine & Culinary Center?

First, the New York Wine & Grape Foundation opened up the New York Wine & Culinary Center in Canandaigua. That made sense to me. The NYWGF is headquartered in the Finger Lakes and that region also has the most wineries. But the news that the NYWGF received a state grant to explore the possibility of opening a similar, but scaled-down version in the Hudson Valley region strikes me as an odd choice. I’m a big supporter of the Hudson Valley region and it’s wines, but why put a center there? The wineries are spread out quite a bit geographically throughout…

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Grapes Gone ‘Ganic at Bonterra Vineyards

Most of us can agree that organic farming is a good thing. Good for the plants. Good for the land. Good for the groundwater. And, good for those eating the resulting produce. But questions remain about whether or not organic vineyard practices lead to better wines. I haven’t formed an opinion yet—mostly because I haven’t had that many organically grown wines. In fact, I had only tasted a couple marginal ones until last week when I got my hands on a set of wines from Bonterra Vineyards, a producer that has bet the farm—literally—on the quality of their organically grown…

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